Psc 161 Exam 2

Front 1

The Self-Concept

Back 1

-our collection of self-knowledge stored in memory
-thoughts, beliefs, and memories of the self become organized and linked together in an associative network.

Front 2

Nodes

Back 2

-concepts and information
-nodes linked together w/ other nodes

Front 3

Behavioral Exemplars

Back 3

-examples of behavior that supports traits you have
-ex. win spelling bee-->I am smart
-can forget about specific exemplars but still left with summary trait representation

Front 4

Spreading Activation

Back 4

-a node in the network becomes activated when a person hears, sees, or thinks about the info the node represents activation spreads to adjacent nodes in network along associative links
-ex. think about 3rd grade best friend leads to activation of other friends you had in 3rd grade

Front 5

Why Network Models Fail

Back 5

-knowledge of self requires vast amnt of info that has been acquired over a lifetime

1. Extensive info
2. Acquisition across contexts (feel smart varies across different environments)
3. Long Retention Intervals (can't possibly remember everything)

-links between nodes weaken over time

Front 6

Self-Schemas

Back 6

-Cognitive generalizations bout the self, derived from past experiences, that organize and guide the processing of self-related info.

Front 7

Markus Study (1977)

Back 7

-3 Groups:

1.independence-schematics
2.dependence-schematics
3.aschematics

-present independent or dependent trait adjectives
-respond with "me" or "not me"

-Dependent variables: trait endorsement, reaction time
-people who have schematic representations make faster judgements
-independent-schematics find independence important and organize their knowledge around it

Front 8

Fong and Markus Study (1982)

Back 8

-3 groups:
1. extravert-schematics
2. introvert-schematics
3. aschematics

-subjects asked to find out about another person
-selected more schema-related questions to ask and were more confident when rating person on schema-relevant traits
-schematics are "experts" in their domain

Front 9

Juvenile Delinquents/Balance

Back 9

-weren't achieving balance between their different selves
-ex. if they don't have a self-schema for studying, why should they try to do well in school?
-Delinquents usually have negative expectations

Front 10

Personal Narratives

Back 10

-our memories and experiences are organized in the form of a story--becomes a personal narrative or life story
-narratives may not be necessarily by reality but how we construct info in our lives

Front 11

Redemption Sequence

Back 11

-transformation of personal suffering into positive-affective life scenes that serve to redeem and justify one's life

Front 12

Contamination Sequence

Back 12

-a very good or positively-affected life-narrative scene or chapter is followed by a very bad or negative outcome. The bad ruins the good that preceded it.
ex. participant falls in love with a woman-gets rejected.

Front 13

Self as Filter

Back 13

-self can be thought of as a lens through which we view the world
-facts:
1. self is highly organized
2.We know more about the self than anything else
3.we are motivated to view the self in a particular way

Front 14

Self-Reference Effect

Back 14

-the tendency to process efficiently and remember well information related to oneself (organized into chapters)

-why does this happen?
-self is well-developed and often-used construct that promotes elaboration and organization of encoded info

Front 15

Rogers, Kuiper, and Kirker Study (1977)

Back 15

-presented with 4 trait adjectives (humorous, happy, etc)
-four processing questions:
1. structural (big letters?)
2. phonemic (rhymes with _____?)
3. semantic (means the same as ______?)
4. self-reference (describes you?)

-Surprise recall task

Results: the more you had to think about the task (self-referencing), better encoded and more recall

Front 16

Stroop Color Task

Back 16

-meaning of word grabs your attn, not the color
-when a certain trait describes a person, they take longer to say the color of the word

Front 17

Egocentrism

Back 17

-the tendency to perceive, understand, and interpret the world in terms of the self

ex. Sally-Anne test: sally puts doll in basket and leaves, anne comes and puts doll in bucket. Sally comes back, where will she look for the doll?

Front 18

Egocentrism Over Email

Back 18

-no paralinguistic cues
-people often overestimate their communication skills
-assume their meaning is getting across

-why does this happen?
1. inability to detach from one's own perspective
2. people hear message as they intended it, not as it was received

Front 19

Illusion of Transparency

Back 19

-tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which their personal mental state is known by others
-believing other people can "see right through us"

-Why does this happen?
1. people are cutely aware if their internal states
2. don't adjust enough for the fact that others are not privy to this privileged info

ex. more aware of lying then other people, tap a song and you think it's really obvious

Front 20

Spotlight Effect
Gilovich, Medvec, and Savitsky, (2000)

Back 20

-subject asked to put on t-shirt picturing:
1.Barry Manilow
2, Famous Person of Choice

-walk into room where subjects were filling out questionnaires
-How many people noticed?

-Results:
-predicted ~45% actual ~23% control1 ~25% control2 ~20%

Front 21

False Consensus Effect

Back 21

-when people's own choices, attitudes, or beliefs bias their estimates of those of other people, leading them to view their own reactions as relatively common

-ex. what % of college students watch Grey's Anatomy?
-you don't watch it and assume others don't watch it, but more watch than you'd expect

Front 22

Pluralistic Ignorance

Back 22

-failure on part of most people to realize that others share their own private reactions. When everyone privately rejects or doesn't uphold group norm, yet believes most other groups accept it
-develops commonly under circumstances in which there is widespread misrepresentation of private views
-ex. understanding course material

Front 23

Prentice and Miller (1993)

Back 23

-students believed that they were more uncomfortable than the average student w/ campus alcohol practices

Front 24

Magical Thinking

Back 24

-belief in the ability to influence events at a distance w/ no physical explanation
-ex. fantasize about competitor breaking her leg, next day she did

-Why does this happen?
1. illusion of control
2. use of mental shortcuts or heuristics
3. may be prone to entertain thoughts, ideas, desires, and intentions as possible causes of action bc these thoughts are salient to them

Front 25

Witch Doctor Voodoo Curse
Pronin et al. study (2006)

Back 25

conditions:
1.evil thoughts: subject encounters rude, obnoxious confed. posing as another subject
2.control condition: subject encounters neutral confed

-subject assigned "witch doctor", confed assigned "victim"
-asked to generate vivid thoughts about confed
-subject stick 5 pins in voodoo doll
-confed reports having a headache

Results:
-participants in evil thoughts condition more likely to believe that they caused the confed's headache, reported pleasant surprise

Front 26

Role of the Physical Self

Back 26

-body is closely tied to the processing of social and emotional info
-our bodily sensations serve as a source for info
-ex. think about being proud, elicits fist pump in the air

Front 27

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

Back 27

-the free expression by outward signs intensifies it. On the other hand, the repression, as far as this is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions...even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds

Front 28

Strack, Martin, and Strepper (1988) Study

Back 28

-participants asked to hold pen either with their teeth or lips
-provided subjective ratings of the funniness of a cartoon
-teeth condition: significantly higher amusement than the lip condition

Front 29

Self-Serving Schematic Representations

Back 29

-dunning argues motivation (esp. self-serving biases) can influence some of the most basic features of social cognition--our representations of concepts

Front 30

Schema

Back 30

-cognitive structure that represents knowledge about a concept or a type of stimulus, including its attributes and the relations among those attributes

Front 31

Self-Serving Category Representations

Back 31

-we tend to define categories in self-serving ways

-ex. a good son/daughter is whatever WE are, thoughtful, loving, obedient, dependable, etc.

Front 32

Self-Serving Trait Definitions

Back 32

-we tend to define traits in self-serving ways

-ex. "what does it mean to be dependable"...you choose behaviors you do that make you dependable

Front 33

Self-Serving Performance Standards

Back 33

-can also be self-serving when it comes to defining performance standards
-is it 'studious' to study 8 hrs/wk?

Front 34

Beauregard and Dunning (1998) Study

Back 34

-students take intelligence test and either receive success or failure feedback
read about another person
-provide ratings of that person's intelligence
-failure should lead people to use the SELF more in judging than that person's intelligence

Results:
-other person's SAT score: ~1320
-failure condition: think the other person is extremely intelligent if their score is lower, think the person is less intelligent than them if they got a higher score

Front 35

Self-Serving Attribution Bias

Back 35

-tendency to attribute own positive behavior to dispositional qualities, but own negative behavior to situational

1.take responsibility for positive behavior (self-enchance, I got an A bc I studies hard)

2.denying responsibility for negative behavior (self-protect, Failed bc there were too many distractions)

causes:
-cognitive: people expect to succeed AND tend to attribute internal causes to unexpected events
-motivational-people want to feel good about self

Front 36

Temporal Appraisal Theory

Back 36

-notion of self over time as string of selves, with varying psychological closeness to present self
-notion of improvement over time (judge difficulty of performance)
-people motivated to think positively about themselves
-past selves provide for downward comparisons, regardless of whether objective improvement has occurred or not (ex. you think that your present self is better than your past self)

Front 37

Wilson and Ross (2001) Study

Back 37

-randomly assigned to rate self or acquaintance of positive (e.g. self-confident) and negative (e.g. immature, narrow minded) traits

conditions:
1. Now/Present
2. Then/Past (beginning of term, ~3.5 months earlier)

Results: people rate themselves more positively in the present than in the past, with acquaintances, the rating doesn't change

Front 38

The Better-Than-Average Effect

Back 38

-lake Wobegon- the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average

-89% of nearly 1 million college seniors in a survey rated themselves as above average on the ability to get along with others

-Why does this happen?
1. people engage in a biased evaluation of their own skills but not of others and thereby find themselves superior by comparison (inaccurate)

Front 39

Worse-Than-Average Effect

Back 39

-when there's an ability/domain that is scored as more difficult, (ex. music, art, acting, etc), you are less likely to rate yourself as above average

Front 40

Unrealistic Optimism

Back 40

-"thinks are better now than they were before, and they're only going to get better"
-Americans consistently believe that the next five years will be better than the present (from 1964-2006)

Front 41

Overly Optimistic Predictions

Back 41

ex:
-students tend to overestimate how well they will do on exams
-students underestimate how long it will take for for them to complete their assignments
-undergrads and professional students tend to overestimate their prospects for success on the job market

Front 42

Role Of Temporal Proximity

Back 42

-asked:
1. predict how you will perform on an exam that is 1 month away
2. predict how you will perform on an exam that is 1 day away
3. predict how you performed on an exam that you have already taken

Results:
-estimated exam score highest 1 month before exam then declines closer the exam gets.
-predictions more accurate when predicted 5 days before feedback or 50 minutes before feedback.
-3 seconds before feedback, est. exam score drops because of brief self-doubt

with self-esteem:
-high self-esteem never got a pessimism effect, score predictions never dropped
-low-self esteem score predictions were lower than high self-esteem indiv to begin with and kept declining the closer they got to feedback

Front 43

Langer (1975) Exaggerated Perceptions of Personal Control

Back 43

-people believe they can exert control over chance events
-illusion is exacerbated when people wrongly believe that skill is involved (ex. shooting craps, slot machines)

Front 44

Lottery Ticket Study

Back 44

-sold $1 tickets to employees at an insurance and manufacturing firm
-subjects either given a ticket randomly or allowed to choose one
-asked later how much they would be willing to sell their ticket for

Results:
-no choice: $1.96
-choice: $8.67

Front 45

Betting Study

Back 45

-random game of chance; select cards from a deck; highest card wins
-either up against a perceived confident opponent or weak opponent

Results:
-weak opponent: wager $16.72, had better sense of control
-confident opponent: wager $9.28

Front 46

Consequences of Positive Illusions of the Self

Back 46

good:
-positive health outcomes
-low cardico. responses to stress, more rapid cardio recovery, lower baseline cortisol levels
-asso. with better mental health

bad:
-defensive neuroticism position
-liked less by others (grandiose)

Front 47

Self-Evaluative Processes

Back 47

-we are constantly evaluating the self (ex. am I smart, a good person, etc)
-think of behavior, past evaluations
-a variety of motives color these evaluative judgements:
1.self-enhancement
2.self-assessment
3. self-consistency

Front 48

Self-Enhancement Motives

Back 48

-people are motivated to see themselves positively
-recall info about successes better than failures
-high explicit and implicit self-esteem
-self-evaluations usually overly positive

Front 49

Self-Enhancement Cultural Differences

Back 49

-westerners tend to self-enhance sign. more than East Asians
-ex. false uniqueness effect- belief one's talents are unique, exhibited among Americans but not Japanese
-people universally have a desire to be viewed within one's culture as appropriate, good, bad, and signif.
-but the common underlying motivation may be expressed in Western Contexts as a desire for self-esteem and in East Asia contexts as a desire for maintaining face
-face=having signif. others believe that they are meeting the consensual standards associated w/ their roles

Front 50

Self-Verification Theory

Back 50

-stable self-views provide the individual w/ a sense of coherence
-people think/behave in ways that promote the survival of their self-conceptions-even if they are negative

Front 51

Swann, Pelham, and Krull (1989) Study

Back 51

-had participants report their best and worst attribute in a pretest questionnaire
had participants interact w/ three other potential partners
gave participants false feedback re: the potential partner's perceptions of them

three potential partners:
1. enhancing/verifying (favorable/best attribute)
2. enhancing/nonverifying (favorable/worst attribute)
3. non-enhancing/verifying (unfavorable/worst attribute)

results:
-people prefer accurate views of themselves, even if it's negative i.e. they like the non-enhancing/verifying people better than the enhancing/nonverifying people

Front 52

Swann and Pelham (1988) Roommate Study

Back 52

-positive self-view=want to keep roommate who also felt highly of them

-negative self-view=also want to keep roommate who felt negatively of them

Front 53

Strategies of Self-Verification

Back 53

-developing an opportunity structure
-displaying signs and symbols (ex. wear UCD sweater off campus)
-selective interaction
-interpersonal prompts (prompt others to see you the way you see yourself)

-seeing more self-confirmatory evidence than exists
-attention
-encoding/retrieval
-interpretation

Front 54

Social Comparison Theory

Back 54

-we are driven to evaluate our opinions and abilities; want to be accurate and confident; it reduces anxiety and stress
-in the absence of objective assessments, we will evaluate our abilities by comparison with others (ex. Am I a tall person?)
-comparison increases as similarity to the other increases (ex. assess how good a runner you are, don't compare to a professional runner, compare to someone w/ same build/run around the same time as you)

-social comparisons occur effortlessly
-with salient targets, social comparisons are made readily and don't require cognitive resources
-it does require resources though to correct for situational influences on comparison target's behavior (ex. why is that person running so well? must be on steroids!)

Front 55

Gilbert, Giesler, and Morris Study (1995)

Back 55

-participants watched target perform schizophrenia-detection task

-target either performs:
1. poorly and subjects were told target was given misleading directions
2. well and subjects are told target was coached on how to do well on the task

tasks:
1.subjects either made cognitively busy (memorize 8-digit number) or not
2.subjects do schizophrenia-detection task (w/o instruction, i.e. target's performance irrelevant) and given ambiguous feedback (10 out of 18 items correct)
3.subjects evaluate own competence at the task

Results:
1.when cogn. busy, context of target's performance not considered; performance affects self-judgements
2.when not busy, context is taken into account and self-ratings are not sign. influenced

conclusion: comparisons are automatic; takes effort to undo them and you can't when you are cogn. busy

Front 56

Types of Comparisons

Back 56

-Upward Comparison: become to those who are better than the self (outcome=feel worse)
-Downward Comparison: compare to those who are worse than the self (outcome=feel better)

Front 57

Self-Evaluation Model

Back 57

-reflection process=basking in the reflected glory of others
-comparison process=evaluating one's performance in light of another's
-what determines the outcome of self-evaluation?
1.closeness of the other
2.relevance of the domain
3. quality of the performance